


The Soul of Remorse

by lowflyingfruit



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-03 06:53:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12743250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lowflyingfruit/pseuds/lowflyingfruit
Summary: Years after losing the Outsider's interest, months after assassinating an Empress, Daud receives a visit he never expected. The Outsider has gifts for him again: a mystery named Delilah, and to help him find the truth, a mysterious clockwork heart.It speaks with the voice of a woman Daud murdered. It hates him. It tells him truths.What, in the end, could Daud's regret possibly mean to Jessamine Kaldwin?





	The Soul of Remorse

At this height, there was only the barest stink of burning whale oil in the air, and a few plumes of dark smoke in the distance. On the rooftops of Dunwall Tower, you’d barely know there was a plague in the city at all. Bright yet slightly overcast, it was a good day for an assassination. There were four of them waiting beyond the crest of the sloped roof, waiting for the moment to strike.

Beneath them, Daud could hear the water lock engaging, and frowned. “It’s the Lord Protector,” Thomas said, as a blue-coated figure emerged from the gatehouse a few seconds later, and swept the Lady Emily up in his arms. “He’s back early.”

“We’ll add it to the bill,” Daud said. They could handle the bodyguard; no matter how skilled and professional, he couldn’t stand up to the powers Daud had been given, and that he shared with his people. He would lose, but he could do some damage in losing. If he was lucky enough, he could even thwart them as he died. “We go ahead.”

Burrows was still talking with the Empress, but at the Lord Protector’s approach, she turned and dismissed Daud’s secret employer. After a few words between the men - asking the bodyguard what the _hell_ he was doing back so early, Daud suspected, so that he’d have a good excuse when he got Daud’s bill later - the bodyguard stepped forward and gave a letter to the Empress. Neither noticed the guards leaving their posts, and nor did Lady Emily, occupied swinging off the bodyguard’s arm. None of them noticed Burrows give the signal that Daud and his people were clear to advance.

The Empress threw the paper down, and Lady Emily looked to the rooftops. Then she frowned and pointed.

“We’ve been spotted,” Thomas said, grim. This was going bad, fast. 

The Empress was already looking around for the rest of her guards. She stepped behind her Lord Protector with practiced smoothness, daughter in her grasp, close enough to him to be protected, and not so close that she would get in the way. The Lord Protector fired his pistol in the air, while the Empress started shouting for help, alarm clear in her voice. Soon even Burrows would not be able to hold back the guards.

Thomas, Rulfio, and Sarah were already engaging. The bodyguard reloaded, fast, and shot at Rulfio, who fell back. Thomas went for a sword contest and lost, deep slash cut into his shoulder. Only Sarah’s intervention prevented the bodyguard from finishing him off right then. He drove her back too.

That was enough. They were running out of time. He transversed in himself, signalling Sarah to tether the bodyguard to the spot and Rulfio to grab Lady Emily.

The Empress lunged after her daughter, but Daud was between them already. He backhanded her across the face and she staggered away. He grasped her shoulder, to steady her and make this quick. She knew what was coming, he could see it in her eyes. Daud slid his sword through her stomach and up.

Everything stopped when he withdrew his blade. Lady Emily’s screaming, the harsh grunts of the bodyguard as he fought Sarah’s hold, even the small, rippling waves in the harbour beyond froze.

“A nightmare, then,” Daud said.

The Empress’ corpse slid off his blade and fell to the stone. The blood flowing from the wound was the only movement he could see. Above him, the overcast sky faded into endless blue-violet.

The letter the Lord Protector had given the Empress lay by her outstretched hand. Daud knew a thing or two about nightmares by now, and reached down to pick it up.

YOU KILLED HER YOU KILLED HER YOU KILLED HER YOU KILLED HER YOU KILLED HER, it read. And so forth.

He dropped the note like it was covered in river krust bile. “A nightmare.” It was certain. It hadn’t happened like this in the waking world.

“You think so?” A familiar voice asked.

Daud turned to see the Outsider, rippling into existence where the bodyguard should have been pinned. “You have been here before, after all,” the thing said. “Not so long ago you stood over Empress Jessamine’s body and turned away knowing for a certainty that she would bleed out where she fell.”

That, he could hardly disagree with. He said nothing.

“But I didn’t come to speak to you about that. There are thousands of coins in your safe,” the black-eyed bastard said. “Enough to buy almost any worldly good, and there they sit, unspent. No more valuable there than any other lump of metal.”

“Did you have a point?” Daud asked. It had been a long time since he’d tired of this being and his capricious cruelties. He knew why the money was still in his safe. The Outsider knew why that money was still in his safe.

The Outsider leaned forward. “I never figured you as a man to regret,” he said.

Daud did not turn to look at the Empress’ Void-frozen body, nor whatever this captured instant showed of Emily Kaldwin. “You’ve said yourself that sometimes your predictions fail.”

“True. You’ve caught my interest again. After all these years.” As if the Outsider’s interest was supposed to matter to him. To be totally fair, it did, in its way. The Outsider was the first and greatest of all Daud’s annoying clients. “And so I have brought you gifts.”

“I’ve seen enough of your gifts.”

“A mystery,” the Outsider continued, and damn him for that. How Daud hated mysteries. More than he hated the Outsider. “A name. Delilah. And to solve this mystery, the heart of a living being, crafted by my hands.”

Daud snorted and turned away, a purely symbolic gesture in the Void. He’d expected to see the Empress’ body again, and had been prepared for both that and the self-loathing he knew he’d feel as he looked. Instead, he saw a human heart, grotesquely augmented by clockwork, shining in the puddle of her lifeblood. "What is  _that_?" he asked, not expecting an answer.

Just as well, because the Outsider didn't really give him one. That would be too easy, and not nearly interesting enough for him. “They’re gifts,” the Outsider repeated, even as Daud knelt to retrieve the thing from the blood. It smeared over his hands as he picked it up. “You don’t have to use them.”

The heart pulsed in his hands. Just once, sluggishly. _Am I to forgive you what you did to me?_ The female voice echoed in his mind. That _familiar_ female voice, cold as Void. Daud had heard it minutes ago in this nightmare, shouting for help.

He didn’t know whether it was willpower or fear that kept him from flinging the heart right back into the Void.

The Outsider spoke once more. “But regret in a man in your profession…I will be watching to see what you do with that bleeding heart of yours, as the noose draws tighter and tighter around your neck.”

Daud woke.

 

—

 

“A name,” Lurk said. “Just a first name?”

“Yes.” Inside his coat, the Heart beat. _Her love is dead too_ , it whispered, for his thoughts alone. _You did not kill her, at least._

“Well, that narrows it down.”

“There can’t be that many in the city,” Daud said. “A few dozen at most.”

He couldn’t see Lurk’s face behind her whaling mask, but he could tell when she was rolling her eyes at him anyway. Something in the way she moved her shoulders and head. It was the sort of thing you learned fast when all your people wore masks. Daud had little to fear from the plague, but the others…he’d had enough death, and the masks would stay on. “I’ll get everyone to keep their ears open.”

They moved on to other business. Contracts, mostly. Even now, with the city falling apart, nobles and merchants sought them out to buy the deaths that the plague hadn’t been considerate enough to bring. _Who would know the value of a life better than an assassin for hire?_ the Heart asked him. _Down to the last coin._

He ignored it with an effort. “Are there any retrievals?” Daud asked. That was the other thing people paid for these days - others to go into the plague districts. With transversals, he and his men could do that work with relative ease. It was coin, and not for murder.

“A couple,” Lurk said. “Not paying good coin, though, and we need the money for elixir.”

“Prioritise those. I’ll review the list of potential contracts myself.”

If he had to kill people, there was at least the hope that this time he could kill those whose deaths would bring something other than ruin to the city.

_You have brought ruin to this city,_ the Heart echoed. _The flood walls are failing. All that you have built will be swept away. Good._

The cursed thing was as cryptic as the being who made it. Daud was resisting thinking of the Heart as “she,” no matter how familiar that voice was. No matter how the voice hated him. They could just _say_ that he was going to die soon. He knew he deserved to die for what he’d done.

He’d throw it into the harbour, but for two things. First, the Outsider had said it was to help him solve the mystery of “Delilah,” and no matter how cryptic and vague he was, the Outsider did not lie. Daud could not stand a mystery. Too often mysteries came back to bite. Second, the Outsider’s gifts were not so easily lost. If he threw the Heart in the harbour he’d find it back in his coat pocket in seconds. It wasn’t even worth trying.

In any case, he probably deserved this particular torment, too.

_I am not here to give you what you deserve_ , the Heart said.

Daud decided to accept a contract on a corrupt Watch sergeant, and a second on a certain Parliamentarian, writing out the short instructions for clients to meet with his people. The money from those, plus whatever they found in their retrieval errands, would be enough to keep their stocks of elixir up. With that job done, he went to supervise training. He’d found that satisfying, once upon a time. He’d been giving them a better life, he thought. Means to defend themselves from the world and all its cruelties.

Now he just wondered if he was making things worse. They wouldn’t tell him so, not to his face, but…

_They love you,_ the Heart told him. _They fear you. They think of you as once you thought of the one in the Void_.

They did _not_.

The rest of the day, he blocked the Heart out as best he could. Difficult, when it spoke right into his head. That accusing voice cut right through his thoughts, spilling secrets into his mind. Things that no mortal could possibly know. The man who first used Daud’s desk embezzled hundreds of coin. The weeper who passed by their walls was abandoned there by her grown children without remorse at the first sign of sickness. The gaunt child who slunk by on the ruined street had killed two people already to defend her younger sister.

He suspected it was all the truth. There would be no point if it wasn’t the truth.

 

—

 

The job wasn’t exactly a hard one. A rich merchant had left certain documents proving his title to a few warehouses in Whitecliff behind when he fled ahead of quarantine; there would be a crate of elixir and a small sum of coin if Daud or one of his people retrieved them. He’d insisted on the coin in advance.

“Do you need assistance on this?” Lurk asked.

“It’s the Old Port District,” Daud said. “Deserted except for a few weepers, and not even many of those. I think I can manage.”

Lurk looked at him sideways, as much as possible in the whaling mask. “If you insist.”

“I do. I should be back before dawn.” A few hours out of his hideout would do him some good, most likely. At least he’d escape the Heart telling him his people’s secrets. Anyone’s secrets but theirs. There were reasons he hadn’t pried, not an inch beyond what he needed to know to trust them. Lurk nodded and transversed away, leaving Daud on top of the quarantine wall, surveying the area.

_You are not the only man in Dunwall to regret what they have become_. _The only difference is the amount of blood you spilled. That is why you ceased to be interesting. So much potential wasted in snuffing out the small lives of others. All that power and all you could think to do with it was kill._

The killing was the mistake, not his lack of imagination. The Heart of all things should know that the Outsider’s interest wasn’t something you necessarily wanted.

_What have they done to me?_  

The Heart’s voice echoed, sounding alarmingly human and upset for an instant. Daud tried to ignore it. There was nothing he could do for her - it. It.

_Delilah_ , it murmured.

Daud transversed to a light fitting. It creaked under his weight. His employer had said the documents should be in the Shelby warehouses, marked by a green sign. Void Gaze was next to useless for spotting that sort of thing except in pitch darkness. To his surprise, there were yellow flickers of life in a nearby building - a pub. A group of refugees hiding from plague, probably. Not the worst place for it, given how deserted the area was, whether they were healthy or sick.

It wasn’t as though he could blame them for avoiding the Flooded District, either. He himself stuck to the Flooded District because nobody else wanted to go there. It was safe there.

_You chose your hideout for the statue of the Empress outside, orb and sceptre in its hands. But it is a statue. It cannot not judge you. It must be a comfort._

Void Gaze started turning up the green of coin and unspoiled food. He’d take those too, and if he found any bottles of hemlock, so much the better. It made the best sleeping poison he knew of, and these days that was more attractive than regular crossbow bolts. Even if he did have to take the time to drag any unconscious bodies away from where the rat swarms might get them. That wasn’t something to worry about here, though. This place wasn’t just quiet, but desolate. A few months ago there would have been boats on the river. People going about their business. The plague had been bad, but until Daud killed the Empress, it hadn’t got this bad.

_How arrogant you are_ , the Heart mocked him. _To think that all the woes of Dunwall are your doing. You are but one of many evils in this city. The weapon, not the wielder. The Knife of Dunwall is nothing but a tool in another’s hand._

He spotted the Shelby sign and slipped into the warehouse with more caution than this deserted place really warranted. It wouldn’t do to get sloppy, even when the only flickers of life-yellow he could see were rats. More green came into view after a few seconds - copper wire and Tyvian ore, mostly, worth picking up if he could carry it. He looked for a flat sheet of green that would indicate paper of value to him.

The office was the logical place to keep that sort of documentation, so that was where Daud went. Still no sign of a life greater than a rat. A glance at the office safe, still locked tight with a simple three-digit combination, showed that green. Daud sighed. A three-digit combination wasn’t too bad to crack, but standing there turning the dial until the safe clicked open was going to take some time, unless he could find the combination in the office somewhere as well.

He didn’t suppose the Heart had any answers for him. _He did not trust the banker_ _who offered to take the deeds to their safe_ , it said, as soon as he thought his inquiry, which told Daud why his employer kept deeds in the safe but nothing of actual use.

So he rummaged through the papers abadoned on the desk. Unlike keys, safe combinations didn’t show up green under Void Gaze. Supernatural powers of perception could be fooled in some strange ways. Inventories, ledgers, paysheets, manifests…

A consignment due to be delivered to a ship named _The Delilah_. Nothing special. Just rations. Signed by someone from the Rothwild slaughterhouse, so it was a whaling ship. Nothing at all unusual, except the name of the ship.

_Named for love_ , the Heart said. _Or he thought it was love, at first, before he realised it was fear._

Depressing as usual. Three weeks he’d been carrying it about. Three weeks of grim, miserable secrets. Now it told him…something. That might possibly be relevant. So. He had a ship named for one Delilah, surname unknown, by some man, both names unknown. Had to be a rich man, too, because poor men didn't name ships. Rothwild himself? It was possible.

How he hated mysteries. He already knew he’d be going to the Rothwild slaughterhouse as soon as possible so he could solve this one. First, though, he had to get this damn safe open and finish the job.

_That_ _is why you interest him_ , the Heart whispered. There was something different in its voice again. Something entirely too lifelike for Daud’s comfort. _You wish to_ know _._

“If that was all it took to get his attention, he’d’ve marked every second son of a bitch at the College,” Daud said. Every second son of a bitch there _wanted_ it. Only the Overseers were worse about it, damned fanatics. They spent too much time hating and fearing the Outsider not to envy his power.

_In the College they cut apart others for what they tell themselves is the greater good. You…you will tear yourself apart for knowledge that benefits no one but you, and maybe not even that. What matter Delilah in a world gone mad?_

“You mean it’s not just a cruel joke by amoral Void-spawn? It’s the sort of thing he’d do.”

_A cruel joke_ , the Heart said. _To give me to you. Yes. That was cruel._

Daud could hardly disagree with her - it - about that. He gave up on finding the combination and resolved to do this the hard way. In silence, even if it took the rest of the night.


End file.
